Dewing away with Dewey

Okay, I'm not going to do away with it entirely. Fairy tales stay 398.2 and poetry 811. But face it, color coding and basic subject arrangements work far better than call numbers in my setting.

It occurred to me last year that even though Dewey is part of the elementary school curriculum--basically starting around second or third grade--a lot of kids just don't get it because decimals are not taught until around fifth grade. Not to mention all the problems with how topics themselves are organized by Dewey--they don't intuitively make sense. I mean, why put spaceships in the machines section when kids are going to look for them under astronomy? Or why put French food in the food section when kids are going to look for it under France?

Not to mention the fact that I do not particularly feel motivated to write about 3,000 different spine labels with Dewey call numbers on them. Plus, I can't teach the kids how to use the electronic catalogue to search for books anyway because of lack of computers for them.

So this year, I'm color coding and following the example of several public libraries, which have been organizing books in the way bookstores do. Apparently this was very controversial. And it's working a lot better. My kids know colors. They can read subject labels. Am I concerned that by doing it this way they will not be able to transfer their knowledge to navigating other libraries? Yes. But my first priority is enabling them to effectively find books in our library in the short time they have there, and getting the books reshelved efficiently so they can find them when they need them.